VERMONT DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 95 



very good butter market, one of the hotels in Boston, where it goes 

 twice a week — we fed that after breakfast and fed all they would eat 

 during the forenoon of it; fed seventy head of stock, fifty or more of 

 them cows, from the 26th of October up to the present time, and it 

 has helped us out a good deal on hay and we have not heard one word 

 from the butter, but I shall not try to raise that kind of ensilage. 



President Aitken. — Are there any questions you would like to ask 

 Mr. Smith? 



Dairyman. — I would like to ask about the relative feed value of the 

 first and second crops of clover, and also the value of mature clover? 



Mr. Smith. — I do not think there is very much odds; we like to cut 

 the first crop as soon as it is fairly well bloomed, the same as we do the 

 next. As I understand it, the clover at about that stage has a better 

 percentage of protein, and also what protein it has, a larger percentage 

 of it is digestible. The way we cure our clover, we like to mow it in 

 the afternoon and the next morning go over it with a hay tedder, cock it 

 up that afternoon or the next day, and if there is any danger from rain 

 we have '250 hay caps to put onto it, and we can get it partially dry with 

 the hay caps on it. If the weather is fairly favorable it will dry out. 



Dairyman. — Did you put that crop in whole or cut it? 



Smith. — We put it in whole. I will say that I did not think it was 

 as good as corn nearly, but the cows ate it practically all up. I have 

 tried it several times; put in a dish of meal and then a handful of that 

 green ensilage, and they have left the meal and grabbed the ensilage. 

 We did not have as much difficulty as I expected. 



Dairyman. — Did it all turn black? 



A. No, we put it in pretty moist; most of it we would go out and 

 mow what we could before breakfast, rake it into winrows while the 

 others were doing the milking, so as to get it into winrows while it had 

 moisture on it, and then draw that in; work there about half a day or a 

 day. 



I said I should not raise that kind of a crop if I could raise anything 

 else, but when you have a thing on your hands you have got to do 

 something with it, and I do not see how I could have handled it in any 



other way to get anything out of it. 



L. W. Peet, Cornwall. — The great Apostle Paul enumerates quite a 

 number of Christian graces, but charity is greater than all, and I have 

 found after enumerating all our feeds that corn is greater than all. For 

 forty years I never failed to raise a good crop of corn until last year, 

 and then all crops were poor. Corn ought to be first and clover comes 

 right in next to corn, and last year I had a good crop of orchard grass. 

 There is nothing that grows like orchard grass. Did you ever measure 

 the growth of orchard grass in a single night? I think it will grow from 

 one-half to three-quarters of an inch every night. I know you can 

 get good feed inside of a week. I cut my orchard grass twice a year, 

 and cut clover twice a year. There is no great difference between or- 

 chard grass and herds grass. I like rowen feed. We have had a silo 



